Thursday, 30 May 2013

Cimabue was a major artist working in Florence at the end of the 13th century. He was born in Florence in 1240 AD. When Cimabue was learning to paint i n the 1260's, Italian painters were still copying the style of Byzantine a rt which always had gold backgrounds. It generally showed saints and angels, as well as Jesus and Mary in very formal, stiff positions, to show how important these figures were, and that they were not like real people. The figures were flat, and very little effort was made to show 100 Great Painters their muscles, or the shadows that would make them look real.

Cimabue was associated with a style of painting known as gothic art, and he was also an important forerunner of the later international gothic style. He introduced a lifelike treatment of traditional religious subjects, and was also famous for his wall paintings. His most famous work, 'Madonna Enthroned', stood three and half metres high! He is considered by some experts to be the first 'modern painter'.

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Grotte Chauvet is a beautiful painted cave in France. It has several very large galleries with more than 300 paintings and engravings that were probably done 32,000 to 30,000 years ago. The paintings show rhinoceroses, felines, bears, owls and mammoths, as well as animals such as owls, hyenas and panthers which have never - or very rarely - been found in previous paintings of this period. In fact, some archaeologists believe that these may be the oldest known paintings in the world, and therefore, they are very special.

Tuesday, 28 May 2013

We know that early Man lived in caves. He lived mainly by hunting, and gradually, he began to decorate the rock faces in the recesses of caves. Early Man created images of the bison and
reindeer which he hunted, and these were the very first paintings ever created.

Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered in many parts of the world, from Europe and Africa, to Australia. Africa has some of the earliest paintings and rock engravings to have been dated. Nearly 30,000 years old, they were discovered in 1969 on the rock face in a cave in Namibia. But the most numerous, and the most sophisticated of prehistoric paintings are on the walls of caves in Southwest France and Northern Spain.